The Retention Soil Filter Plus and received encouragement towards its practical implementation. An encouragement for increased application of this combined natural and engineering treatment system. (LinkedIn)

The Ernst Kuntze Prize serves to encourage young scientists and practitioners in research and invention leading to practical improvements in water or wastewater treatment and management. It is awarded by DWA, the German Association for Water, Wastewater and Waste

Their press release of 26 October highlights the unique features of the RSFplus concept:

Andrea F. Brunsch, Heinrich Dahmen, Katharina Knorz and Robert Krump have developed a retention soil filter for further cleaning of the sewage treatment plant effluent from organic micropollutants and inorganic trace substances. They also showed the positive effect of special additives on the retention of these compounds. The flexibly used retention soil filter also treats the combined sewer overflow during rain events. A corresponding large-scale plant was built at the Erftverband and put into operation in autumn 2019. The simple technology of a retention soil filter comes with low operating costs; the annual costs are only around 30 percent compared to the currently discussed methods for removing organic micropollutants.

The10th International Symposium on Managed Aquifer Recharge took place from May20-24, 2019, in Madrid, Spain. AquaNES was respresented with a number of talks and posters around cNES in relation to bank filtration and soil infiltration for groundwater recharge.

Marie was awarded for her work on intensive monitoring and characterisation of the water quality and hydrogeology at the site as to better understand mechanism and define leverage points for improving the scheme. Eventually these data fed into the development of an ICT tool for optimised operation of the site.

Activities from the AquaNES project will be highlighted in the up-coming  “Innovation in Drinking Water Treatment” event of the Swiss Association of the Gas and Water Sector (SVGW). Latest technology and legal trends in treatment, monitoring and disinfection will be discussed with practitioners.

The event was held in German with French simultaneous translation.

Site visit to Rheinbach demonstration site of Erftverband. Partners of Vertech Group and the project manager went there to see the long-time running pilot plant and the progress in the construction of the full-scale retention soil filter. In the AquaNES project the system will be investigated by Life Cycle Assessment to evidence its low environmental impacts in removing micro-pollutants from WWTP effluents and CSO spills. Watch the video to learn more about the concept

The full consortium met in Budapest for its month 24 meeting, after two years of intensive work in the demonstration sites. Next to the technical progress, partners discussed ways towards a multi-criteria assessment of the interventions.

For a technical visit, Budapest Waterworks took the group out to one of their historic water reservoirs and the reverse osmosis pilot plant.

The appointed External Expert and AquaNES work package leaders met in Basel to review the progress of the first 18 months. Part of the group also took the opportunity to visit the Lange Erlen demonstration site.

At the World’s Leading Trade Fair for Water, Sewage, Waste and Raw Material Management AquaNES exhibited at the shared booth experience.science.future B4.138/238.

IFAT experience.science.future. brings together synergies in politics, research and industry.

Project result are also presented in the framework programme in Hall B4 on Tuesday 15 May (13.30-14.00)

More info at www.ifat.de

KWB hosted a 2-day working meeting in Berlin on 18-19 October 2017. The experts exchanged about the progress in the demonstration sites of work package 3

A visit to the pilot installation at Schönerlinde WWTP illustrated the combination of effluent ozonation with subsequent treatment in constructed wetland. The combination of these processes is to improve the removal of organic micropollutants and transformation products. Technology for the pilot is provided by partners Xylem and Akut. The local water utility BWB is operating the plant with scientific support of KWB - Berlin Centre of Competence for Water.

Following WATEC Israel 2017 exhibition and conference in Tel Aviv mid of September project partners visited the site. Team members of Xylem inspected the refurbishment of the ozonator and discussed first results of the newly installed on-line probes and effectiveness of the recirculation.

The site was also show-cased to visitor groups from WATEC.

In the last month also the 1st big sampling campaign for micropollutants and microbial parameters, including viruse, was conducted.

During the Water Innovation Week in Porto from 25-29 September AquaNES will be represented in multiple ways by various consortium partners:

• Side event AG MAR Solutions, 26.09.17, 14 h: project overview and demo-sites studies presentation
• Exemplified solution presentation in the conference session “Innovations for implementing EU water legislation” , 27.09.17 at 14:15 h
• Representation on the H2020 projects booth in the exhibition
• Participation in “Boosting Research & Innovation in the Water Sector: The Impact of EU-funded actions” side event on 29.09.17

Consult the programme for more details on the event website.

The 10^th and 11^th of July 2017, the BACTcontrol system from MicroLAN company has been installed to measure E. coli and total coliforms in the treated wastewater channel of Agon-Coutainville WWTP.

The BACTcontrol detects bacteria based on their specific enzymatic activity. The reaction they catalyse releases a fluorescence dye that can be quantified photometrically. In Agon-Coutainville this measurement will survey the variations in the water quality to eventually better assess the performance of the subsequent reed bed filtration and the impact on the groundwater.

Just a week later another device was commissioned in the Lange Erlen site. It online-monitors the total bacterial activity in the inflow to the advanced oxidation stage. Measurement of samples taken manually in the downstream processes can help assessing microbial bio-degradation in the soil systems.